Gabriel Gomez no Scott Brown redux

If nothing else, the five-month campaign for the Massachusetts Senate seat has clarified this: Republican Gabriel Gomez is no Scott Brown.

Memories of Brown’s stunning 2010 victory led to unrealistic expectations that another GOP upset was possible in reliably blue Massachusetts. But Democratic Rep. Ed Markey heads into Tuesday’s special election the overwhelming favorite to succeed John Kerry — and it might not even be close.

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Markey v. Gomez: Bay state brawl

Not a single poll has shown Gomez ahead since he prevailed in a three-way April primary. A New England College poll and the Boston Herald both put Markey up 20 percentage points going into the final weekend. Gomez’s own internal polls had him down 7 points.

Gomez’s aides are still predicting a shocker, saying low-turnout special elections are notoriously unpredictable. But Democrats have outspent Republicans by about 2-to-1 on television, according to one media analysis, which only adds to a built-in Democratic advantage.

Here are POLITICO’s six reasons why Gomez never took off, based on more than a dozen interviews with Bay State operatives:

1. It’s not 2010

Brown three years ago tapped into leeriness of President Barack Obama and his controversial health care law; even voters in a state nicknamed “Taxachusetts” scoffed at what was being disparaged at the time as an ultra-left agenda. Send him to Washington, Brown promised, and he’d break the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority.

Gomez has run aggressively against Washington, linking Markey to everything unpopular about the federal government.

But Obama carried the state in November by 23 percentage points over former Gov. Mitt Romney. The president’s image has been sullied some by the Internal Revenue Service scandal and the National Security Agency sweeping up phone records, but neither resonates the way the health care overhaul did. This time around, Markey is running on Obamacare and calling Gomez a threat to the law.

Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh said “all the stuff everyone in the 202 area code navel-gazes about all day long” is not breaking through this time.

“Now when they see Congress not working, the majority of voters see Republicans,” she said. “They don’t want to send a Republican to Washington to undercut Elizabeth Warren or Obama.”

Brown also benefited from 50-plus percent voter turnout in January. Now it’s summertime, and people have left town on vacation or are paying more attention to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup finals. Fewer than 50,000 absentee ballots have been requested, state officials said Thursday, 14,000 fewer than in 2010.

In 2010, nobody in the Democratic Party apparatus believed Brown could actually win — until it was too late to stop his momentum. This time, the national party machine made an early decision to go all in.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Majority PAC spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads attacking Gomez. And every major liberal interest group also chipped in: environmentalists, unions and women’s groups.

A stream of surrogates visited the state, including the president, first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton.

“I would be amazed if Gomez could pull it off,” one prominent Republican said, “because [Democrats] don’t want that to happen again,” referring to a repeat of 2010.

While Democrats were pulling out all the stops, the major GOP groups were standing on the sidelines, seemingly afraid of losing. Donors are fatigued after last fall’s shellacking, and the big groups didn’t want to invest in a likely loser.

“The campaign never got it together,” said a consultant to a GOP super PAC. “And outside groups watch for basic measurements to engage and none of them were met — candidate performance, fundraising, message. … [T]he days of throwing money at every Republican candidate and campaign are over.”

This mind-set is enormously frustrating to Team Gomez.

“We don’t care about bedwetters who don’t know a thing about how to win in Massachusetts,” said Gomez adviser Lenny Alcivar. “The Republican Party, still reeling from 2012, spent months and months looking for a candidate just like Gabriel Gomez. … The best way to get over losing is to start winning.”

The Americans for Progressive Action super PAC (a slightly deceptive name) finally launched a $700,000 TV ad buy to boost Gomez in mid-June. And the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent $400,000 in mid-May to the state party, while the Republican National Committee transferred $126,000 at the end of May.

Warren and Brown both signed a “People’s Pledge” last year designed to keep outside money from pouring into the state. Markey prodded Gomez to do the same, but the Republican nominee refused, thinking that conservative-aligned groups would buy TV ads to help offset his fundraising disadvantage.

Gomez’s background is in private equity, but he’s not Mitt Romney rich. He put less than $1 million of his own money into winning the primary but then appears to have closed his checkbook. The campaign put $300,000 into a last-minute ad buy Friday, which it said was unplanned but made possible by last-minute donations.